Thursday, September 20, 2018

Inside Secrets: Did Linden Lab Ban the Owners of Second Life’s Largest Blog to “Protect” the Virtual Community?

Virtual world gossip leads to death threats, doxxing, and a suicide hotline

Update, 9/24: While SL Secrets is currently among the very most visited user-run SL blogs, it's not necessarily the largest sites -- see this correction post.

If you want to know the current state of Second Life, the virtual world that turned 15 years old this year, consider [one of] its most visited user-run blogs: It’s not about virtual fashion, or in-game events, or roleplay. No: The most popular Second Life blog by far is SL Secrets. According to Similar Web, the site attracted 140,000 visits last month, slightly down from a peak of 170,000 visits, last May -- which very roughly translates to about 20,000-40,000 monthly readers, a significant segment of SL’s total active population of some 500,000.

Launched about a decade ago and loosely inspired by the popular PostSecret blog, SL Secrets operates on a similar premise, publishing anonymously submitted confessions every Sunday -- except with SL Secrets, they’re confessions about life in the virtual world. And where Post Secret entries tend be unspoken revelations about the sender, SL Secrets largely traffics in Second Life-based gossip, virtual drama, and scandalous avatar-to-avatar accusations -- in other words, less like found diary entries from random nameless souls, than a slam book composed during a high school reunion by bitter attendees high on Jack Daniels and amyl nitrate.

If you want to know the current state of Second Life, consider what just happened to the co-founders of SL Secrets, Lourdes Denimore and Kesseret Steeplechase: For reasons that aren’t completely clear, Linden Lab has blocked both from using Second Life. This week, Kesseret’s SL account was put “on hold” (she sent me a screen grab indicating as much), while last May, Lourdes’ account was “terminated”. (Copied here, the e-mail Linden Lab sent her.)

“I had to call them in order to get that e-mail,” Lourdes Denimore tells me. It explains the ban for repeated violations of Linden Lab’s Terms of Service, specifically pointing to sections 2.7, 5.2, 5.3, and 6.1. Lourdes flatly denies she has done such a thing: “No I did not violate the Terms of Second Life in Second Life.”

However, 5.3 of the ToS includes this highly broad, nuclear option clause:

"We may terminate your Account if we determine in our discretion that such action is necessary or advisable to comply with legal requirements or protect the rights or interests of Linden Lab, the Service community or any third party."

And since both women describe themselves as not currently active in the virtual world, a consensus among many in the SL community has emerged: Lourdes and Kesseret were banned not for anything they did in Second Life, but for what they did on the web, with SL Secrets.

“Banning people for only hosting gossip memes created by others is unfair and ridiculous,” as Cajsa Lilliehook, a longtime SLer, well-known community figure, and occasional New World Notes contributor, puts its. “People should be banned for violations in-world.”

For the record, I asked Linden Lab about the official reasons for Lourdes and Kesseret’s banning, but seeing as the company doesn’t publicly comment on policy enforcement, it’s unlikely they’ll reply. However, the invocation of 5.3 strongly suggests the company sees SL Secrets as a threat to “the rights or interests of Linden Lab [and] the Service community.”

Is SL Secrets a threat to the user community and the company that depends on it? Speaking on condition of anonymity, several well-known SL content creators emphatically say yes -- or at best, characterize it as highly corrosive:

“The site added nothing positive to the community,” one famed SL brand owner tells me, “and in the last few months has become the place for airing personal grievances, but very little of general interest… it is considered petty, when it is considered at all. But the blame for that is really on the people that have submitted to the site, more than the creators of it.”

The images in this post, by the way, are borrowed from recent SL Secrets posts, but these are actually on the milder, SFW side. Accusations of virtual sex adultery are common, as are allegations of various Linden Dollar scams. Snark over poor avatar fashion choices is frequent, and admittedly amusing. But the entries often descend into darkness, with claims of criminal acts, including virtual pedophilia (which is illegal in Germany and other regions.)

Perhaps the most common, cutting theme to SL Secret entries is this: You may pretend to be a glamorous, sexy avatar in this made-up world, but your real life is nothing like that. Perhaps unsurprisingly, each post also comes with information for contacting a suicide hotline.

Popular Second Life fashion brands and fashion-related events -- the staple of the virtual economy -- are also frequent targets for SL Secrets’ scorn and ridicule. Like enraged Yelp reviews except with memes, illegible fonts, and furries, Second Life’s latest clothing lines are castigated for shoddy quality, or -- often with little evidence -- of being ripoffs of another SL brand, or 3D artist.

The estimated economic impact is taken quite seriously by some: One content creator I talked to has seriously considered buying SL Secrets from its owners, shutting it down, and binding them to silence with an NDA.

"SL Secrets’ owners hide behind the illusion that real lives are not affected,” another tells me. “[But] the fate of many livelihoods is often in the hands of two women who are both banned by Linden Lab and offer nothing but negativity to a community that is already struggling.”

A very famed content creator, who’s been subject to a doxxing attack on SL Secrets, is a bit more forgiving of the editors:

“When my real life address and phone number was being posted, they [deleted the submissions] without even me contacting them. I appreciate a gossip website that at least is kind of responsible about real life consequences.”

Even so, this person reports the real life consequences are painful enough:

“I still feel sick to my stomach every Sunday. I wish people didn't enjoy hurting each other like this.” And for that reason, also supports Linden Lab banning the blog’s owners: “[Before] I would have said SL Secrets isn’t a Terms of Service violation -- keep your rules fair for everyone. [But now] I’m happy Linden Lab did.” However: “I don't think it’ll change a thing other than show awareness on Linden Lab’s side.”

I put these points to SL Secrets’ owners:

“Do you think it's fair for Linden Lab to consider SL Secrets a detriment to the interests of Linden Lab and the user community?”

“More so than they are a detriment to themselves and their own interests?” Lourdes scoffs. But then adds: “Honestly, all joking aside, I can see how they would believe that. I don't agree. But their sandbox, their rules.”

Kesseret is unconvinced, and points to SLS submissions that seem to have some social value: “[W]hen people scam the community we have posts on that also,” she says. “Linden Lab doesn't do a damn thing about that. Aren't fundraisers for a scam also a detriment to the community and the fragile SL economy?"

Still, she adds: “It's Weekly SL World news. It's entertainment. Like Jerry Springer was back in the late 90s. If someone is genuinely hurt by SLSecrets they have other issues. They need to log off.”

Kesseret has been genuinely threatened by SL Secrets herself, she says, provoked by what she posted:

“[Readers] have posted my RL address. Denial of service attacks, lawsuits. The more serious secrets generate less drama. People mostly get worked up about sex secrets. And obviously the pedo ones. I believe once someone said they wanted to hurt me but then they'd put me out of my misery.”

She grins. “I don't take it all seriously.”

They tell me that they do omit the most noxious Secrets submissions:

“Every week I toss secrets that are submitted,” says Lourdes. “RL picture doxxing. Threatening RL violence. Racist crap. Oh yeah, RL nudes, we get those lots...We decide what we want to publish. If we don't want to publish it we won't.”

She once interceded for a friend whose parent had reportedly just died. As if cued by Satan, someone submitted a secret questioning whether that parent really was dead. “I refused to publish."

They dismiss the idea that SL Secrets has actually hurt people -- or to be more specific, question whether that’s even their responsibility:

“I feel that if what some anonymous person on the Internet says about you has ‘consequences’ for you, that you have much bigger issues that need to addressed,” says Lourdes. “If some random person says, ‘Fat bitch get off SL and take care of your kids!!’, if their life comes crashing down because of that, they have serious issues.”

And for those who do have issues, there’s always the suicide hotline the editors have included at the end of each post.

“I have no regrets,” Lourdes adds, “I've been pretty vocal about that on SL Secrets. It not our job to look out for the mentally unstable.”

And if Linden Lab did ban them for SL Secrets, it has done nothing to stop them:

“[The ban] doesn't change anything,” says Kesseret Steeplechase. “We don't need to log into Second Life to run SL Secrets. We just need submissions. Banning us doesn't stop the submissions.”

So Secrets is poised to continue, and may even enjoy more popularity after Kesseret's suspension. The month Lourdes was banned, pageviews jumped from the previous month by 50,000.

One content creator I spoke to says the anxiety from all this has led her to taking Xanax.

“If there's so much drama and hate in the community and it's so stressful,” I ask them, “why do you keep creating content for it?

“Because it is probably the highest pay I will ever have a chance to earn. And I do love my customers. I have faith that the drama... will die down in due time.”

Each owner of SL Secrets is skeptical they exert an economic impact on the virtual world marketplace.

“I can't imagine a small site like SLsecrets having a detrimental effect of the economy of SL,” as Kesseret puts it. “No one admits to reading it anyway.”

“Based on third party analytics, SL Secrets is almost certainly the largest Second Life-focused blog,” I tell them. “It's the most read. Do you think that might change anything you do in the future?”

“Wow umm,” says Lourdes. She seems surprised.

Then adds: “I think we need to enter our evil lab and see what we can concoct with that juicy piece of info. I'm suppressing my Emperor Palpatine cackle right now. If this is why Linden Lab took action, they haven't done a damn thing.”

“SLSecrets will continue until it fizzles out,” Kesseret Steeplechase says.